Is Facebook Building a Smartphone?

Everyone wants to get into the smartphone market it seems. First Apple brought the heat with the iPhone which challenged earlier pseudo-smartphones like Blackberry and Palm to step up. Then Google put pressure on Apple with their array of Android-based devices. Now it seems someone else might be wanting to jump in the game.

Techcrunch was behind the breaking news of the Nexus One when Google rolled out their very own phone, and according to their sources it was right about then that Facebook started to get the urge. Not exactly a phone, per se, the top-secret project in Facebook's labs is rumored to be an operating system that a third-party manufacturer would install into their handset. Apparently Zuckerberg & Co. think their mobile apps aren't quite enough, they want to be more deeply integrated into the core functions of your mobile phone.

This echoes rumors pre-dating Apple's iOS 4.0 when it was claimed that Facebook was being built more tightly integrated into the iPhone. That didn't quite happen, though the app can sync its contact list with your phone's contact list. Clearly there's some interest, but what more is there to the rumor?

We start with two names, Joe Hewitt and Matthew Papakipos. Regular readers of Mac|Life may recognize the first name as the creator of the Facebook app who eventually quit working on the iPhone version out of frustration with Apple's obscure and bizarre App Store regulations. You may also remember him from his high praise when the iPad first came out. Going back even earlier, Hewitt was one of the creators of Firefox and had been at work on Parakey, a "Web-based operating system," before Facebook bought it up in 2007.

The second name is one of Facebook's Google acquisitions. A hot developer, Papakipos was the project leader on Google's Chrome OS until he quit to go to Facebook. We're sure Google could have matched any offer Facebook put on the table, so the move most likely wasn't salary or perks oriented. Put these two together the way Techcrunch's source has and things start to sound interesting.

Where things start to get a bit more speculative in the article is where we have a harder time imagining the reality. A $50 price tag for a handset sounds nice, but what else would a Facebook phone offer? Tighter Facebook integration would be beneficial for many people, but to really compete in the market, this device is going to need a bit more than your contacts and a low price tag. Will there be apps? We can't imagine a smartphone without them anymore. Will the apps be Android compliant or iOS or some third iteration? What other kinds of apps will a Facebook phone allow? And what kind of personal information are users going to be required to part with in order to make the handset work?

This one bears watching, though there always remains the possibility that the project stays and dies in the lab or the Facebook mobile app is updated to worm itself even more into your life.